Maria Kronfeldner

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Maria Kronfeldner works in the philosophy of the life sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences and has published widely in these areas. She has been awarded The Karl Popper Essay Prize of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and The Philosophical Quarterly International Essay Prize. From 2010-2014 she was Junior Professor at Bielefeld University. Earlier she held several fellowships, among them at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin; at the Fishbein Center for History of Science and Medicine of the University of Chicago; at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh; and at the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science of the University of Sydney. She earned her PhD at the University of Regensburg in 2006.

Area of specialisation: philosophy of the life sciences, philosophy of the social sciences, in particular philosophy of anthropology, social philosophy.

Area of competence: history of the life sciences, general philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of mind.

Profile: During her graduate time, she focused on philosophy of mind, pragmatism, and environmental ethics. Combining her interest in philosophy of mind with her artistic activities (theatre, video, photography), she started research on philosophy of creativity. Since novelty is not only occurring in human minds, but also in nature, her research on the concept of creativity led her to the history and philosophy of the life sciences (HPLS). She has analysed Darwinian approaches to creativity and cultural evolution as well as the history of the concept of culture and cultural inheritance.

NEW!Call for Two Fully Funded Interdisiciplinary PhD Fellowships in the thematic area "Exclusion and Inclusion in Context: The Invention of Humanity and Dehumanization."See here. (Application period now closed; will be re-opened in due time if necessary)

Paper "On academic freedom as a prerequisite for scientific creativity" (draft) to be presented at the 2019 British Society of Aesthetics Connection Conference "Creativity Across the Arts and Sciences", Bristol, 16-17 Apr, 2019.

Paper "Essentialism and Dehumanization" (draft) to be published as part of a Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, publication estimate: fall 2020.